LATEX for Word Processor Users Version 1.0.10

LATEX for Word Processor Users version 1.0.10

January 8, 2015

Abstract Text processing with LATEX offers several advantages over word processing. How- ever, beginners may find it hard to figure out how to perform common tasks and obtain certain features. This manual attempts to ease the transition by drawing com- parisons between word processing and LATEX typesetting. The main word processor capabilities are listed, along with their equivalent LATEX commands. Many examples are provided.

Contents

1 Introduction 1 1.1 Preliminaries...... 2 1.1.1 Editor-Supported Features...... 2 1.1.2 Adding Packages...... 2 1.1.3 Adding the Info Page...... 4 1.2 The Golden Rules...... 5

2 The File Menu 5 2.1 File/New ...... 5 2.2 File/Save As...... 6 2.3 File/Save As Template ...... 6 2.4 File/Import ...... 6 2.5 File/Page Setup ...... 7 2.5.1 Page Setup/Headers and Footers ...... 8 2.6 File/Printer Setup ...... 8 2.7 File/Print Preview ...... 8 2.8 File/Print ...... 8 2.9 File/Versions ...... 9

3 The Edit Menu 9 3.1 Edit/Autotext ...... 9

4 The Insert Menu 9 4.1 Insert/Breaks ...... 9 4.2 Insert/Enumerated List ...... 10 4.3 Insert/Special Character ...... 12 4.3.1 The AC Sign...... 13

i 4.4 Insert/Formula ...... 13 4.5 Insert/Footnote ...... 13 4.5.1 Footnotes at End of Document...... 14 4.6 Insert/Indices ...... 15 4.7 Insert/Vertical and Horizontal Space ...... 15 4.8 Insert/Tabs ...... 15 4.9 Insert/Cross Reference ...... 16 4.10 Insert/Margin Notes ...... 16 4.11 Insert/Text Frame ...... 16 4.12 Insert/Figure ...... 17 4.12.1 Wrapping Floats...... 19 4.13 Insert/Shapes ...... 19 4.14 Insert/Line ...... 21 4.15 Insert/Hyperlink ...... 21 4.16 Insert/Comment ...... 22

5 The Format Menu 22 5.1 Format/Line Spacing ...... 22 5.2 Format/Character ...... 22 5.2.1 Superscript and Subscript in Chemical Formulae...... 23 5.2.2 Underline styles...... 23 5.2.3 Format/Character Size ...... 24 5.2.4 Format/Character Font ...... 25 5.2.5 Format/Character Colour ...... 26 5.3 Format/Paragraph ...... 27 5.3.1 Paragraph/Horizontal Alignment ...... 27 5.3.2 Paragraph/Vertical Alignment ...... 27 5.3.3 Paragraph/Margins ...... 29 5.3.4 Paragraph/Indentation ...... 29 5.3.5 Paragraph/Border and Shade ...... 29 5.3.6 Paragraph/Colour ...... 30 5.3.7 Format/Columns ...... 31

6 The Table Menu 31 6.1 Table/Line Spacing ...... 33 6.2 Table/Rule Width ...... 33 6.3 Table/Aligning Numbers ...... 33 6.4 Using slashbox ...... 34 6.5 Importing Data in LATEX Tables...... 34

7 The Tools Menu 35 7.1 Tools/Mail Merges ...... 35 7.2 Tools/Labels ...... 36 7.3 Tools/Default Language ...... 37 7.4 Tools/Hyphenation ...... 38 7.5 Tools/Spell Check ...... 38

8 The Help Menu 39

9 The End 39

ii A Document Templates 40

List of Tables

1 Useful key bindings for Emacs, Vim, and Jed in IDE mode...... 3 2 How to obtain some special characters...... 12 3 Font attributes...... 23 4 Font sizes...... 24 5 Actual font size in pt...... 24 6 Common font families...... 26 7 Standard LATEX environments...... 28 8 A sample table...... 32

List of Figures

1 A smiley representing the author of this guide...... 17 2 A Gnuplot graph...... 18 3 Inserting a LATEX formula...... 19 4 A LATEX object can be edited as desired...... 20 5 Book template...... 40 6 Report template...... 41 7 Letter template...... 41 8 How to write a notice...... 42 9 How to write a poster...... 43

1 Introduction

First of all, let me state that this is not a LATEX primer! If you’re reading this document, I assume that you have at least a basic understanding of LATEX and of its basic commands. In this guide, I’ll explain how to replace a word processor effectively using LATEX. Word processors are the ‘killer app’ in modern office automation. They’re perceived to be easier than LATEX as they have a friendly WYSIWYG interface, and the average secretary will learn to use them in a relatively short time. The problem is, these beasts keep growing slow, bloated,1 buggy, crash-prone, expensive, virus ridden, and incompatible with each other. Not to talk about their default output quality. LATEX is an excellent alternative (in some cases, it is the only viable alternative); but it’s not much intuitive for those accustomed to WYSIWYG. To sum up, sometimes you may want to use word processor-like features—but using LATEX. It would be nice to know how to obtain some effects with LATEX when you know how to get them with your once-favourite :-) word processor. That’s why I wrote this quick reference. As I said, it assumes some basic LATEX knowl- edge; if it’s not the case, I suggest that you go to http://www.ctan.org/starter.html and download The (Not So) Short Introduction to LATEX2e. Another good primer is http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/.

1once upon a time, I wrote my thesis on a 128k RAM, Z80-based home computer. The word processor WordStar and my thesis ﬁt on a single CP/M-bootable 720K ﬂoppy, with lots of room to spare!

1 In the following sections, we shall navigate through the menus and menu items of an imaginary word processor, ﬁnding out the corresponding LATEX way of doing the same work.

1.1 Preliminaries

Many word processor features are implemented by the editor; others by standard LATEX commands; others still are obtained using packages. These are sets of macros that extend LATEX providing new commands and environments. There are lots of packages around: the only problem is knowing where they are, what they do, and how to install them. More about packages in Section 1.1.2. Packages and other TEX-related material are available at many sites that constitute the CTAN: the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. I already mentioned http://www.ctan. org; this site has a wide list of mirrors. From now on, CTAN: means ‘your favourite CTAN mirror here, starting from the TEX directory’. For instance, you can get LATEX for your platform from CTAN://systems (e.g., http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/systems/). To write your documents, you will need a good text editor. A better choice for beginners is a LATEX IDE: an editor dedicated to writing LATEX source, with preview and many facilities. I suggest that you install one of the programs listed below; all of them are Free/Open Source software.

• Texmaker (multiplatform): http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/index.html • TeXstudio (multiplatform): http://texstudio.sourceforge.net/ • TeXworks (multiplatform): http://tug.org/texworks/ • TeXShop (Mac OS X): http://www.uoregon.edu/∼koch/texshop/ • TeXnicCenter (Windows): http://www.texniccenter.org/

Information about LATEX on the Mac can be found at http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/.

1.1.1 Editor-Supported Features

LATEX is just a formatter: things like cut and paste, search and replace etc. are delegated to the editor. Table1 summarises the main commands of popular editors for geeks: GNU emacs and vim with their native key bindings, and jed conﬁgured for Borland IDE key bindings.

1.1.2 Adding Packages

The following information applies to TeX Live, which ships with most GNU/Linux distributions. It may also work on MacTeX, but I have no ﬁrst-hand experience. Instructions for MiKTEX (probably the most popular implementation for Windows) will follow below.

2 Action Emacs Vim Jed command mode Alt-X ESC Alt-X insert mode n/a i a o O n/a line editor mode n/a : n/a file operations open file Ctrl-X Ctrl-F :e Ctrl-KE insert file Ctrl-Xi :r Ctrl-KR save file Ctrl-X Ctrl-S :w Ctrl-KD save as Ctrl-X Ctrl-W name :w name Ctrl-KS close file Ctrl-XK :q Ctrl-KQ change buffer Ctrl-XB bN Ctrl-KN undo Ctrl-XU u Ctrl-U redo Ctrl-^ Ctrl-R Ctrl-G Ctrl-U exit Ctrl-X Ctrl-C :qa! Ctrl-KX moving around word left Alt-B b Ctrl-A word right Alt-F w Ctrl-F start of line Ctrl-A 0 Ctrl-QS end of line Ctrl-E $ Ctrl-QD page up Alt-V Ctrl-U Ctrl-R page down Ctrl-V Ctrl-D Ctrl-C start of buffer Alt-< 1G Ctrl-QR end of buffer Alt-> G Ctrl-QC line n. Alt-G n. n.G Ctrl-QI deleting character left Ctrl-H X BS character right Ctrl-D x Alt-G word left Alt-DEL db Alt-BS word right Alt-D dw Ctrl-T end of line Ctrl-K d$ Ctrl-QY line Ctrl-A Ctrl-K dd Ctrl-Y search & replace search Ctrl-S text /text Ctrl-QS replace Alt-% :s/old/new/g Ctrl-QA blocks start selection Ctrl-SPACE v Ctrl-KB cut Ctrl-W D Ctrl-KY copy Alt-W Y Ctrl-KH paste Ctrl-Y P Ctrl-KC

Table 1: Useful key bindings for Emacs, Vim, and Jed in IDE mode.

3 A large collection of LATEX packages is natively supported; for instance, Ubuntu provides lots of texlive-* packages. Please note the ambiguity: we’re talking of .deb packages containing LATEX packages. If you need to install an unsupported package, do the following.

1. create this directory structure:

$ mkdir -p ~/texmf/tex/latex

Under this directory, new packages will be installed. 2. get the package (typically as a zip-compressed directory) from your favourite CTAN mirror; let’s call it foo.zip 3. unpack it in the right place:

$ mkdir ~/texmf/tex/latex/foo $ mv foo.zip ~/texmf/tex/latex/foo $ cd ~/texmf/tex/latex/foo ; unzip foo.zip

4. If no .sty ﬁle exists, run the command latex foo.ins or latex foo.dtx to create it;

5. run the command texhash ~/texmf.

To add a package to MiKTEX, create the directory \latex\newpackage under C:\localtexmf\ tex\ and put the relevant ﬁles in there. Proceed as above, then run MiKTeX Options and click on the ‘Refresh now’ button. Alternatively, issue the command initexmf -u. That’s it! Once a package is installed, you make it available in your documents adding a line under the documentclass declaration:

\usepackage{foo}

1.1.3 Adding the Info Page

‘Man’ and ‘Info’ pages are command-line sources of documentation for software, widely employed in Unix and Linux systems. If your LATEX distributions lacks the latex2e.info info page, do the following:

1. download it from http://tug.ctan.org/info/latex2e-help-texinfo/latex2e.info; 2. run these commands:

$ sudo cp latex2e.info /usr/share/info/ $ sudo ginstall-info latex2e.info dir

Now, info latex or info latex2e is available.

4 1.2 The Golden Rules

Before we start, please keep this in mind:

1. get used to structuring your documents: think in terms of parts, chapters, sections, and so on. This holds true even if you’re not writing a scientiﬁc paper.

2.L ATEX explicitly discourages the user from messing about with formatting parameters. Don’t worry too much about the looks of what you’re writing, concentrate on the contents.

Applying these simple rules, your printed material will magically look professional. That said, this guide (which breaks the second rule somehow!) will help you overcome the second rule. So, you will also be able to compose unstructured material such as circulars, notices, poster, etc.

2 The File Menu

Obviously, some entries of this menu have nothing to do with LATEX: File/Open, File/Save, File/Close depend on the editor.

2.1 File/New

This is the LATEX equivalent of a blank page:

\documentclass{article} \thispagestyle{empty} % no page number \begin{document} % This is a comment. Write your stuff here. \end{document}

As documents written in LATEX are inherently structured, this is a more realistic example:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} \begin{document} \title{My Document} \author{John Smith} \date{London, \today} \maketitle \begin{abstract} This is a very short article. \end{abstract} \tableofcontents \listoftables \listoffigures \section{First Section} \label{sec:start} This is the text of the section. See \cite{Gonzato} for details. \section{End}

5 \label{sec:end} This is the end of the document. Please go to Section \ref{sec:start} to read it again. \begin{thebibliography}{99} \bibitem{Gonzato} Gonzato G. \textit{\LaTeX{} for Word Processor Users}. CTAN, 2001--2015. \end{thebibliography} \end{document}

More document templates are listed in AppendixA.

2.2 File/Save As. . .

The following tools are handy if you want to convert LATEX to other formats:

• TEX4ht is probably the best LATEX to HTML converter: http://tug.org/tex4ht

• latex2html, another converter to HTML: http://saftsack.fs.uni-bayreuth.de/∼latex2ht/, CTAN://support/latex2html

• latex2rtf, a converter to Rich Text Format: CTAN://support/latex2rtf

• detex (a command line converter) removes all LATEX tags and outputs plain text: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/trinkle/detex/, CTAN://support/detex/

See also Section 2.7 for details on PDF creation.

2.3 File/Save As Template

Saving a LATEX ‘template’ would mean, as I see it, create a new LATEX package. This is complex matter that goes beyond the scopes of this guide.

2.4 File/Import

These tools convert from other formats to LATEX:

• rtf2latex: CTAN://support/rtf2latex

• html2latex: CTAN://support/html2latex

• wvware is a set of tools that convert from MS Word to several formats including LATEX; http://wvware.sourceforge.net • the free word processor Abiword, http://www.abiword.org, imports MS Word and can export LATEX. • txt2tex: CTAN://support/txt2tex does a fairly good job at converting plain text ﬁles into LATEX.

6 Other *2latex converters are available at the same address. Another interesting extension is OOoLatex, a set of macros for OpenOﬃce: http:// ooolatex.sourceforge.net/. Libreoﬃce users have an equivalent extension called TexMaths, http://roland65.free.fr/texmaths/.

2.5 File/Page Setup

The normal method for setting paper size, orientation, and margins, is to use parameters in \documentclass. Paper size can be a4paper, a5paper, b5paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, executivepaper; orientation is portrait by default, or optionally landscape. For example,

\documentclass[a5paper,landscape,12pt]{article}

Document-wide margins are set with the \setlength command, which is used to change the value of variables and counters:

\setlength{\leftmargin}{2cm} \setlength{\rightmargin}{2cm} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{2cm} \setlength{\evensidemargin}{2cm} \setlength{\topmargin}{-1cm} \setlength{\textwidth}{18cm} \setlength{\textheight}{25cm}

The geometry package allows for complete control of parameters such as paper size, margins width, and so on. geometry has far too many options to list them all, and you’re invited to read its documentation. A fairly complete example of its usage is shown below. In this example, some parameters are not compatible with each other, and are there for purpose of argument only.

\usepackage{geometry} % top of document ... \geometry{paperwidth=25cm} \geometry{paperheight=35cm} % or: \geometry{papersize={25cm,35cm}} \geometry{width=20cm} % total width \geometry{heigth=30cm} % total heigth % or: \geometry{total={20cm,30cm}} \geometry{textwidth=18cm} % width - marginpar \geometry{textheight=25cm} % heigth - header - footer % or: \geometry{body={18cm,25cm}} \geometry{left=3cm} % left margin \geometry{right=1.5cm} % right margin % or: \geometry{hmargin={3cm,2cm}} \geometry{top=2cm} % top margin \geometry{bottom=3cm} % bottom margin % or: \geometry{vmargin={2cm,3cm}} \geometry{marginparwidth=2cm} \geometry{head=1cm} % header space

Options can also be set this way:

\usepackage[left=3cm, right=2cm]{geometry}

7 2.5.1 Page Setup/Headers and Footers

The fancyhdr package provides the new command \pagestyle{fancy}. This will create a header reporting the current section (chapter in book.cls) and subsection, and a footer with the page number: pretty fancy indeed. Headers and footers can obviously be customised. They are made of three parts: a left-aligned part, a centre-aligned part, and a right-aligned part. To set those, use the commands like in this example:

\usepackage{fancyhdr} ... \lhead{} % empty \chead{Hello, world!} \rhead{Page \thepage} % page number \lfoot{} \cfoot{\textbf{Hello!}} \rfoot{}

2.6 File/Printer Setup

This is highly OS-dependent, and deﬁnitely outside of the scopes of LATEX. Assuming that you’re using a Unix-like system, these tips may come in handy:

• lpr -P printername prints to the speciﬁed printer;

• lpr -# 10 prints 10 copies;

• lpr -r removes the ﬁle after printing it

See below for more tips.

2.7 File/Print Preview

When the LATEX input ﬁle is ready, you have several options:

• convert it to .dvi (latex file.tex) and previewing it with xdvi, yap or other DVI previewer;

• convert the .dvi to PostScript with dvips, then use some variant of Ghostview;

• producing a .pdf ﬁle with dvipdf or directly with pdflatex.

In my opinion, producing a .pdf ﬁle is the best option, as it makes for widest portability. While dvipdf is just a script that converts the .dvi to .ps then to .pdf, using pdflatex is more interesting. In fact, some packages like hyperref and url make the resulting .pdf ﬁle browseable; see Section 4.15. However, using pdflatex you might experience problems b with other packages. More details in Section 4.12.

2.8 File/Print

Simply use lpr file.ps from the command line, or via the File/Print menu entry of your previewer.

8 2.9 File/Versions

Although the version package provides basic facilities for versioning LATEX sources, using external tools is usually a better choice. There are lots of programs for revision control and collaborative writing. While old-style geeks may want to use a single-user tool like RCS (I do), more powerful and multi-user tools like Subversion, Git, Mercurial etc. may be preferable. Some of them are integrated with the editor. An introduction to LATEX and Subversion is here: http://tug.org/pracjourn/2007-3/kalderon-svnmulti/.

3 The Edit Menu

This menu has more to do with the editor than LATEX features. To begin with, refer to Table1 that shows the key bindings for the entries Edit/Cut, Edit/Copy, Edit/Paste, Edit/Find, and Edit/Replace of some common editors. Selecting text is not only performed for subsequent cut and paste, but also for applying styles to the selected text. The equivalent action in LATEX is to enclose the text either between braces, or in an environment. For example, to apply the bold attribute to a portion of text you will use one of the following: this is \textbf{bold text;}\\ this is also this is bold text; {\bfseries bold text;}\\ this is also bold text; \begin{bfseries} this is bold text, too! this is bold text, too! \end{bfseries}

3.1 Edit/Autotext

We call autotext the feature that makes you type, say, ‘PS’ to have the word ‘PostScript’ automatically expanded. This is an editor feature, but there’s a rough LATEX equivalent:

\def\PS {\textsc{PostScript}} which will insert the equivalent of \textsc{PostScript} whenever you type \PS. Beware, case is important.

4 The Insert Menu

4.1 Insert/Breaks

• a non-breakable space is set with ˜ (tilde)

• to force a line break, use \linebreak or \newline; see below for details

• to start a new paragraph use a blank line, or \\ (possibly followed by an optional space, as in \\[1cm]), or \par

• ﬁnally, for a page break use \newpage or \clearpage

9 Unlike \newline, \linebreak stretches the line to the margins:

I am stretched!\linebreak I am stretched! But I am not.\newline But I am not. Ok, now you get it. Ok, now you get it.

Besides, \clearpage differs from \newpage in that it prints all pending floats, that is figures and tables. Floats will be explained in Section 4.12.

4.2 Insert/Enumerated List

Bulleted and enumerated lists correspond to the itemize and enumerate environments. To customise the bullet in a list environment, you can specify it as an argument to \item:

\begin{itemize} * with an asterisk; \item[*] with an asterisk; \item[-] with a dash; - with a dash; \item[.] with a dot. \end{itemize} . with a dot.

Another way is to redeﬁne the style of the counters2 hat refer to the digits in the ﬁrst- to fourth-level lists. These counters are \labelitemi, \labelitemii, \labelitemiii and \labelitemiv for itemised lists; \labelenumi, \labelenumii, \labelenumiii and \labelenumiv for enumerated lists. There are several styles: \arabic for ‘normal’ numbers, \roman for lower-case roman numerals (e.g., viii is 8), \Roman for upper-case roman numerals, \alph and \Alph for lower- and upper-case letters, and \fnsymbol that I will not explain for now:

\begin{itemize} \renewcommand{\labelitemi}{*} * first level, item 1 \renewcommand{\labelitemii}{-} \item first level, item 1 * first level, item 2 \item first level, item 2 \begin{itemize} - second level, item 1 \item second level, item 1 - second level, item 2 \item second level, item 2 \end{itemize} * first level, item 3 \item first level, item 3 \end{itemize}

2 each text element numbered by LATEX (sections, lists, ﬁgures, etc.) has a counter associated with it.

10 To use, say, roman numbers and uppercase letters in enumerated lists, do this: \begin{enumerate} \renewcommand{\labelenumi} {\Alph{enumi}} A first level, item 1 \renewcommand{\labelenumii} {\roman{enumii}} B first level, item 2 \item first level, item 1 \item first level, item 2 i second level, item 1 \begin{enumerate} ii second level, item 2 \item second level, item 1 \item second level, item 2 C first level, item 3 \end{enumerate} \item first level, item 3 \end{enumerate} Alternatively, use the enumerate package. It redefines the enumerate environment with the ability to specify an optional argument. Any occurrence of one of the characters A a I i 1 will produce the value of the counter, using (respectively) \Alph, \alph, \Roman, \roman, or \arabic. To include some text, enclose it in braces:

\begin{enumerate}[{Example} I.] Example I. First example. \item First example.\label{item:first} \item Second example. Example II. Second example. \item Last example. Go to Item~\ref{item:first}. Example III. Last example. Go to ItemI. \end{enumerate}

To change the number of an enumerated item, just redeﬁne its counter: \begin{enumerate} \setcounter{enumi}{2} 3. Example 3. \item Example 3. \item Example 4. 4. Example 4. \setcounter{enumi}{5} 6. Example 6. \item Example 6. \end{enumerate} Lists within paragraphs are implemented by the paralist package, which provides the inparaenum environment: I’ll throw in a list of items: \begin{inparaenum} \item apples, \item pears, and \item oranges. I’ll throw in a list of items: 1. apples, \end{inparaenum} 2. pears, and 3. oranges. The same list The same list can be labelled with letters: can be labelled with letters: a) apples, \begin{inparaenum} b) pears, and c) oranges. The ﬁrst item is [\itshape a) \upshape] a. \item apples, \label{first} \item pears, and \item oranges. The first item is \ref{first}. \end{inparaenum} As seen above, the characters A a I i 1 can be used to modify the counter. paralist can do much more, and I suggest that you read its documentation.

11 Character LATEX Sequence $ \$ or \textdollar & \& % \% \_ or \textunderscore { \{ or \textbraceleft } \} or \textbraceright < $<$ or \textless > $>$ or \textgreater \ \textbackslash | \textbar • \textbullet ‡ \textdaggerdbl † \textdagger ¶ \textparagraph § \textsection c \textcopyright ˆ \textasciicircum ˜ \textasciitilde or \~{} ∼ $\sim$ R \textregistered TM \texttrademark a \textordfeminine o \textordmasculine

Table 2: How to obtain some special characters.

4.3 Insert/Special Character

First of all, let’s remind that some characters have a special meaning in LATEX. They must be entered either with a leading \, or using them in math mode, or even writing special commands: see Table2. Another way to enter special characters is using their ASCII code and the \char command. For example, you could insert the characters $&^~ entering \char36 \char38 \char94 \char126. There are packages that provide thousands of unusual characters and symbols. For instance, pifont provides the commands \ding, \dingfill, \dingline, and \dinglist. The ﬁrst command produces the Dingbat character of the speciﬁed code. The other commands are equivalent to the \fill, \line, and \list commands and environment, but use the Dingbat code given as parameter:

\begin{dinglist}{43} one \item one \item two two \item three

\end{dinglist} three

12 Another nice variant is this:

\begin{dingautolist}{172} x one \item one \item two y two \item three \end{dingautolist} z three

There are far too many symbols to mention them all in this guide. Rather, I’ll point you to ‘The Comprehensive LATEX Symbol List’ at CTAN://info/symbols/comprehensive.

4.3.1 The AC Sign

The oﬃcial Euro sign is provided by the eurosym package, which can be used in two ways:

\usepackage[gen]{eurosym} \usepackage[official]{eurosym}

Both provide the \euro command, which produces AC. The actual shape of the symbol depends on the declaration: the [gen] option provides a symbol that works with all font styles; the second declaration produces e. Please note the diﬀerence. The latter shape can always be obtained with \officialeuro. Another package that provides the Euro sign is marvosym, which also provides many more ﬁne characters. You get AC with \EUR.

4.4 Insert/Formula

LATEX is particularly strong at typesetting math. To insert math symbols in the main text, you must enclose them between $: I like math: $x^n + y^n \neq I like math: xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6= 2 is my z^n \forall n \neq 2$ is my favourite theorem. favourite theorem.

The environments displaymath and equation typeset formulae aside from the text. The latter adds an equation number for later reference: Fermat’s Last Theorem is defined as: \begin{equation} Fermat’s Last Theorem is deﬁned as: x^n + y^n \neq z^n \forall n \neq 2 xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6= 2 (1) \label{eq:fermat} \end{equation} Can you prove Eq.1? Can you prove Eq.~\ref{eq:fermat}?

4.5 Insert/Footnote

The command \footnote[n]{footnote text} is all you need; the optional parameter [n] modiﬁes the footnote number. The \footnote command should be placed after commas, full stops, and other punctuation signs that follow the word.

13 To use a symbol or arbitrary text instead of a number, redefine the counter associated with \footnote: \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{read me!} read me! This footnote\footnote This footnote says it all. {I mean this one.} read me!I mean this one. says it all. Using this method, you can get footnote numbers in roman numerals, or replaced by nice symbols: \renewcommand{\thefootnote} {\Roman{footnote}} II II This\footnote{The first.} This is the first footnote, and this is the † is the first footnote, second. The end. and this\footnote{The second.} IIThe first. is the second. IIThe second. \renewcommand{\thefootnote} †At last! {\fnsymbol{footnote}} The end.\footnote[8]{At last!} Note the \fnsymbol{footnote} thing. It uses 9 symbols associated with the values 1. . . 9 of the footnote counter: ∗ † ‡ § ¶ k ∗∗ †† ‡‡. To make several references to the same footnote, don’t write its number explicitly. Rather, do this: This\footnote{the first.} \newcounter{\myfootnote} 1 2 \setcounter{\myfootnote} This and this are footnotes: please read 1 {\value{footnote}} note again. and that\footnote{the second.} 1the first. are footnotes: please read note 2the second. \footnotemark [\value{\myfootnote}] again. Warning: minipages use their own counters, mpfootnote and thempfootnote.

4.5.1 Footnotes at End of Document

The endnotes package lets you move all footnotes at the end of the document. You’ll have to add this line to the preamble:

\let\footnote=\endnote and these lines as the last thing in your document:

\newpage \begingroup \parindent 0pt \parskip 2ex \def\enotesize{\normalsize} \theendnotes \endgroup

Other commands are available, please read the endnotes.sty source.

14 4.6 Insert/Indices

Generating and inserting a table of contents, list of tables, and list of ﬁgures is a trivial task in LATEX. All you have to do is insert these lines before the ﬁrst \section or \chapter of your document:

\tableofcontents \listoffigures \listoftables

4.7 Insert/Vertical and Horizontal Space

This entry doesn’t actually exist in any word processor I am aware of. This is in fact a limitation that LATEX fills in a very elegant way. Space filling is used to center text horizontally, vertically, or both; this is a difficult task to perform with any word processor, and requires a lot of trial end error. Use a combination of \null or ~ to set fixed marks, followed by \vfill and \hfill like in this example: one \hfill two\\ one two \vfill ~ \hfill three \hfill ~\\ three \vfill four \hfill five \null four five

Normally, LATEX won’t let you insert blank spaces at your will: two or more are considered a single space. However, if you do want to make your document look messy, use ~ to make a non-breakable space. Also, use the command \hspace like in this example:

This is a \hspace{2cm} This is a 2-cm-wide hole. 2-cm-wide hole.

4.8 Insert/Tabs

The tabbing environment provides a rough equivalent to the action of the TAB key, and it’s used to align text in columns. These are the most commonly used commands:

Command Action \= Sets a tab stop \> Advances to the next tab stop \+ Sets the left margin one tab stop to the right \- Sets the left margin one tab stop to the left \\ Ends a line \pushtabs Saves all tab stop positions \poptabs Restores previously saved tab stop positions

15 This example shows some of the available commands:

\begin{tabbing} % let’s set the tab positions ~ \hspace{1cm} \= ~ \hspace{2cm} \= ~ \hspace{3cm} \= \kill % discard text Zero One Two Three Zero \> One \> Two \> Three \\ Zero One Three Zero \> One \> \> Three \+ \\ % go right Zero Two Three Zero \> Two \> Three \- \\ % go left Zero One Two Zero \> One \> Two \\ new tab 1. . . new tab 2 \pushtabs % save tab positions new tab new tab 1{\ldots} \= new tab 2 \\ Zero One Two Three new \> tab \\ \poptabs % restore tab positions Zero \> One \> Two \> Three \end{tabbing}

See also the tabular and table environments.

4.9 Insert/Cross Reference

The commands \label, \ref, and \pageref are all you need to insert labels in the text and do cross referencing. The standard format of labels is the prefix:suffix form, where prefix is one of the following: cha for chapters, eq for equations, fig for ﬁgures, sec for (sub)sections, and tab for tables. References to a page (section, table, ﬁgure, etc.) number can be obtained using \label and \ref as in this example:

\paragraph{Example.} \label{par:example} Example. This paragraph appears in This paragraph appears in Section~\ref{par:example} Section 4.9 on page 16. on page~\pageref{par:example}.

Of course, you may use your own preﬁxes. For example, take this enumerated list:

\begin{enumerate} \item{first step: skip to 1. ﬁrst step: skip to3 \ref{item:end} \label{item:start}} \item{another step (unreferenced)} 2. another step (unreferenced) \item{end: go back to 3. end: go back to1 \ref{item:start} \label{item:end}} \end{enumerate}

4.10 Insert/Margin Notes

Very simple: use \marginpar{text}.

4.11 Insert/Text Frame

A text frame is used to define a part of text that does not break across pages. To place a text frame on a fixed position on the page, use the textpos package, as shown in the example listed in fig.9 (see AppendixA).

16 If you don’t need to specify a ﬁxed . . . and this is some other text position, then use the minipage enclosed in a boxedminipage (miniature page) environment. This environment, provided by the text is enclosed in a minipage. . . package of same name.

I remind you what a minipage declaration looks like:

\begin{minipage}[position]{width} ... \end{minipage}

In a boxedminipage, the space between the frame and the text is set with this command:

\setlength{\fboxsep}{5mm}

4.12 Insert/Figure

(The reference guide for graphic inclusion in LATEX is ‘Using Imported Graphics in LATEX2e’, a.k.a. epslatex.ps.) A ‘ﬁgure’ can be not only a picture, but also a portion of text, a table, etc. that you put in a figure environment. This is an example:

\begin{figure}[htbp] % [htbp] specifies the % preferred placement: here, top, % bottom, or separate page. =8-) \begin{center} \texttt{=8-)} \end{center} Figure 1: A smiley representing \caption{A smiley representing the author of this guide. the author of this guide.} \label{fig:mysmiley} \end{figure}

Please note that figures are not guaranteed to appear exactly where you write the code! In b fact, the main difference with word processors is that figures don’t have a fixed placement; they ‘float’ to the optimal position that LATEX finds for them. So, the text shouldn’t refer to a figure like ‘the figure below’ or ‘the figure above’; use ‘see fig.~\ref{fig:label}’ instead. Owing to this property, figures and tables are called floats. If you do need to position a float exactly, use the here package that provides an optional placement argument H (meaning, “right HERE!”). Given a picture in Encapsulated PostScript (.eps) format, you insert it in a LATEX source file using the graphicx package and commands like those shown in fig.2.

When you typeset your document with \latex then dvips, graphic inclusion only works with EPS ﬁles; pdflatex accepts JPG, PNG, and of course PDF ﬁles. The latter choice might be preferable for most users.

17 Gnuplot 3D graph \begin{figure} sin(x*x + y*y)/(x*x + y*y) \begin{center} Z 1 \fbox{\includegraphics 0.8 0.6 0.4 [width=0.5\textwidth, angle=-90] 0.2 0 -0.2 {gnuplot.ps}} -0.4

4 3 \caption{A Gnuplot graph.} 2 1 -4 -3 0 -2 -1 -1 Y \label{fig:gnuplot} 0 -2 1 2 -3 X 3 \end{center} 4 -4 \end{figure}

Figure 2: A Gnuplot graph.

There are several packages that convert common graphic formats like .jpg, .gif, .png etc. to .eps and/or .pdf; for example, ImageMagik (http://www.imagemagik.org) and The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org). However, these applications produce huge PostScript files. Best results are obtained using applications that wrap the bitmap, turning it into a com- pact PostScript file. You’ll want to use jpeg2ps (http://www.pdflib.com/jpeg2ps/ index.html) or bmeps (CTAN://support/bmeps). The former is often the best choice for wrapping .jpg files, but the latter handles more graphics formats. If you wish to make both .pdf and .ps from the same source file, include these commands:

\usepackage{ifpdf} ... % include the right options \ifpdf \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} \pdfcompresslevel=9 \else \usepackage{graphicx} \fi ... % include the right graphic file \ifpdf \includegraphics{file.png} \else \includegraphics{file.eps} \fi

Z If you have more than 18 figures without text between them, you’ll get the ‘Too many unprocessed floats’ LATEX error. The quickest way to solve this problem is to put \clearpage after three or four figures.

18 4.12.1 Wrapping Floats

For a magazine-like layout, use the wrapﬁg package:

If you meet this guy, give him some money.

\begin{wrapfigure}[4]{l}[5pt]{2cm} {\Huge If you meet this guy, give him some money. \texttt{=8-)} The reason may not be appar- } ent to you, but I can assure \end{wrapfigure} =8-) that your money will end up The reason may not be apparent to you, in good hands. I say again, if but I can assure that your money you meet this guy, give him some money: will end up in good hands. he knows how to use it properly. OK? I say again, if you meet this guy, give him some money: he knows how to use it properly. OK?

The parameters are the number of lines to be narrowed, the ﬁgure placement, the overhang, and the ﬁgure width.

4.13 Insert/Shapes

LATEX provides a picture environment whithin which you use commands like \circle, \oval and so on. In my opinion, drawing pictures without a graphical environment is just too hard, and picture has several limitations too. It’s much better to use a couple of great programs, both free and open source: the vector drawing program Inkscape, https://inkscape.org/, along with Pstoedit, http://www.pstoedit.net/. Start Inkscape and draw any shape you wish using its tools. To insert text rendered by LATEX, select Extensions/Render/LaTeX formula..., insert your text as in ﬁg.3, then click on Apply.

Figure 3: Inserting a LATEX formula.

Your LATEX-rendered text will be included as a graphics object, and you’ll be able to edit it as you wish. The resulting picture can be exported to several formats supported by LATEX, such as PDF, PNG, and many others. More information here: http://www.ctan. org/tex-archive/info/svg-inkscape. If you wish to do real magic, then check out the following packages/programs:

• pgf is a TEX macro package for generating graphics: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf/

19 Figure 4: A LATEX object can be edited as desired.

• GLE (Graphics Layout Engine) is a graphics scripting language designed for creating publication quality graphs, plots, diagrams, ﬁgures and slides: www.gle-graphics.org

• Asymptote is a powerful descriptive vector graphics language that provides a natural coordinate-based framework for technical drawing: http://asymptote.sourceforge.net/

• ePiX, a collection of batch utilities for GNU/Linux and similar platforms, creates mathematically accurate ﬁgures, plots, and movies using easy-to-learn syntax: http://mathcs.holycross.edu/∼ahwang/current/ePiX.html;

• pstricks is a set of macros that allow the inclusion of PostScript drawings in LATEX documents: http://tug.org/PSTricks/main.cgi/

These packages let you make publication-quality PostScript drawings in LATEX. Many more are available; search the web for “LaTeX vector graphics”. Many more kinds of ‘shapes’ can also be inserted. To whet your appetite, please visit the TEX Showcase page, http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/.

20 4.14 Insert/Line

Draw lines of any length and thickness with \rule: This is a page-wide rule:\\ This is a page-wide rule: \rule{\linewidth}{1pt} but this one is shorter but this one is shorter and thicker: and thicker:\\ \rule{2cm}{2mm}

Another interesting ‘line’ is that made of dots (\dotfill), often used to relate things. This is how it’s done:

Total price \dotfill \euro~10 Total price ...... AC 10

4.15 Insert/Hyperlink

The hyperref package lets you write URLs and other external references. When used together with dvipdf or pdflatex, hyperref lets you make browseable .pdf documents! For instance, this document uses this declaration:

\usepackage[colorlinks, urlcolor=blue, filecolor=magenta, linkcolor=darkred, hyperfootnotes=false]{hyperref}

Let’s see an example:

The \hypertarget{ctan}{CTAN} main site is \url{http://www.ctan.org}, a.k.a \href{http://www.ctan.org}{CTAN://}. The CTAN main site is http://www.ctan. org, a.k.a CTAN://. Listen to \href{run:midifile.mid} {this MIDI file}. Listen to this MIDI ﬁle. Click here to go back to the top. Click \hyperlink{ctan}{here} to go back to the top.

As you can see, the \url command typesets its contents using a monospace font. To use the same font as the remaining text, use the command:

\urlstyle{same} after the \hyperref declaration. The \hypertarget and \hyperlink commands provide internal links, just like HTML; \href creates links to URLs or external files. Note the run: parameter: you can run external programs like multimedia players, office applications, whatever. As far as I know, this feature only works in Adobe Reader, Okular, and Evince. On Linux and possibly other Unix variants, you’ll have to instruct your favourite PDF reader what to run when an external file is referenced. Insert lines like the following in your .mailcap or /etc/mailcap:

21 audio/midi;/usr/bin/timidity %s audio/*; xmms %s video/*; xine -pfhq %s

Please read hyperref’s documentation for further examples and possibilities.

4.16 Insert/Comment

This is done inserting % before each line, or by using the package comment that provides the environment of the same name.

5 The Format Menu

In general, the main format properties of a document are set with parameters in \documentclass: default font size (10, 11, or 12pt), paper (a4paper, a5paper, b5paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, executivepaper), and orientation (portrait, landscape). For example,

\documentclass[a5paper,landscape,12pt]{article}

Alternative font sizes can be speciﬁed as explained in Section 5.2.3.

5.1 Format/Line Spacing

The package setspace provide the environments singlespace, onehalfspace, and double- space. In addition, the environment/command \spacing{amount} will set the spacing to the speciﬁed amount:

\begin{spacing}{2.5} These two lines These two lines \\ are crazily spaced! \end{spacing} are crazily spaced! \begin{spacing}{1} Much better, these lines\\ have a pretty space. Much better, these lines \end{spacing} have a pretty space.

To apply line spacing to the whole document, use the \linespread{factor} command in the preamble. Default value of factor is 1; larger values give larger line spacing (1.6 is roughly double line spacing).

5.2 Format/Character

Standard character properties are listed in Table3, font sizes in Table4. Please note that actual font size depends on the default size deﬁned in documentclass (10, 11, or 12 pt); see Table5. Please note the diﬀerence between italics and emphasised text. For example, this portion of text is typeset in italics, and these words are emphasised in upright. As you can see, \emph is a logical rather than typographic command.

22 Text attribute Environment form Example \textnormal textnormal main document font \textrm rmfamily roman \textit itshape italics \emph n/a emphasis \textmd mdseries medium weight (default) \textbf bfseries boldface \textup upshape upright (default) \textsl slshape slanted \textsf sffamily sans serif \textsc scshape small caps \texttt ttfamily typewriter \underline underline underline \textsuperscript n/a this is superscript \mathrm n/a xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6= 2 \mathbf n/a xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6= 2 \mathsf n/a xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6= 2 \mathtt n/a xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6= 2 \mathit n/a x n + yn 6= z n ∀n 6= 2 \mathnormal n/a xn + yn 6= zn∀n 6=  \mathcal n/a §\ + †\ 6= ‡\∀\= 6 ∈

Table 3: Font attributes.

Also, please note that subscript is normally used in math mode only. The trick to use it in normal text is: this is this is $_{\mbox{\footnotesize{subscript}}}$ subscript

5.2.1 Superscript and Subscript in Chemical Formulae

Most chemical formulae could be entered as math formulae, using ^ and _ to obtain superscript and subscript. The mhchem package provides a simpler command, though. Digits are printed as subscripts by default, as superscript when preceded by ^. Formulae must be enclosed in the \ce command:

\ce{H2O + CO2 -> H2CO3}\\ H2O + CO2 −−→ H2CO3 2+ 2– \ce{CaCO3 -> Ca^2+ + CO3^2-}\\ CaCO3 −−→ Ca + CO3 2– – \ce{CO3^2- + H2CO3 -> 2 HCO3^-}\\ CO3 + H2CO3 −−→ 2HCO3 2+ – \ce{CaCO3 + H2CO3 -> Ca^2+ + 2HCO3^-} CaCO3 + H2CO3 −−→ Ca + 2 HCO3

5.2.2 Underline styles

Normally, underline is not used. It’s just a relic of the old teletype era, and it doesn’t look really good. If you still want to use underline, the ulem package provides some fancy

23 Font size Example tiny sample text scriptsize sample text footnotesize sample text small sample text normalsize sample text large sample text Large sample text LARGE sample text huge sample text Huge sample text Table 4: Font sizes

Default font size 10pt 11pt 12pt tiny 5 6 6 scriptsize 7 8 8 footnotesize 8 9 10 small 9 10 10.95 normalsize 10 10.95 12 large 12 12 14.4 Large 14.4 14.4 17.28 LARGE 17.2 17.28 20.74 huge 20.7 20.74 24.88 Huge 24.8 24.88 24.88

Table 5: Actual font size in pt

styles:

\uline{important} \uuline{urgent}

\uwave{boat} important urgent :::::boat wrong //////////removed \sout{wrong} \xout{removed}

Beware: ulem redeﬁnes the \emph command, which will be replaced by underline. To avoid this behaviour, use this declaration:

\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}

5.2.3 Format/Character Size

If the standard font sizes aren’t enough for you, the package extsizes may be handy. It provides ‘extended’ versions of the standard document classes, with support for sizes 8–12, 14, 17, and 20 pt. For example, let’s suppose you want to typeset an article using a 17 pt font. You’ll use this document preamble:

24 \documentclass[17pt]{extarticle}

Another way to get big fonts is to use the package type1cm, which provides commands like the following:

\fontsize{72pt}{72pt}\selectfont No Smoking

(The example above is way too large to ﬁt on this page. . . ) Parameters are font size and baseline. Yet another approach is this: \resizebox{!}{1cm}{1-cm tall} 1-cm tall ropped capitals at the start of a paragraph can be obtained using the lettrine package, D which provides a fully customisable \lettrine command. This paragraph uses the default behaviour:

\lettrine{D}{ropped} capitals at the start...

5.2.4 Format/Character Font

LATEX uses its own fonts (Computer Modern), automatically generated when needed by the METAFONT subsystem. This ensures portability and yields very good results. However, many of us are accustomed to other fonts: Times, Helvetica, Sans Serif. . . Fortunately, LATEX can use PostScript fonts. Try using one of the following packages: avant, avangar, bookman, chancery, charter, courier, helvet, helvetic, ncntrsbk, newcent, palatcm, palatino, pifont, times, utopia, zapfchan. Insert \usepackage{times} and enjoy the results. The only caveat is that LATEX handles maths at its best only with Computer Modern fonts: using PostScript fonts might render your formulas slightly less appealing. The packages above set the font for the whole document. To use a PostScript font for a region of text only, specify the font family as in the example below. Common font families are listed in Table6.

Z Beware, some font shapes may be unavailable on some systems!

This is Computer Modern Roman, This is Computer Modern Roman, this is {\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont this is Helvetica!} Helvetica!

Yet another possibility is replacing a standard LATEX font with a PostScript one: for example, you may want to use Avantgarde whenever Computer Modern Sans Serif would appear. These commands can be renewed as in the example below:

• \rmdefault (roman)

• \sfdefault (sans serif)

• \ttdefault (typewriter)

25 Family Name cmr Computer Modern Roman cmss Computer Modern Sans Serif cmtt Computer Modern Typewriter pag Avantgarde pbk Bookman phv Helvetica pnc New Century Schoolbook ppl Palatino ptm Times pcr Courier

Table 6: Common font families.

• \bfdefault (boldface)

• \mddefault (medium)

• \itdefault (italics)

• \sldefault (slanted)

• \scdefault (small caps)

• \updefault (upright)

% Avantgarde replaces sans serif \renewcommand{\sfdefault}{pag}

5.2.5 Format/Character Colour

You can colour words using the package color and appropriate commands. Predeﬁned colours are black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow; you can also deﬁne your own.

\textcolor{red}{This is red.}\\ \color{blue} This text is blue!\\ This is red. So is this. Let’s change.\\ This text is blue! \definecolor{mygreen} {rgb}{0.1,1,0.1} So is this. Let’s change. \color{mygreen} This is my shade of green! This is my shade of green!\\ A cyan box \color{black} A green box in a blue frame \colorbox{cyan}{A cyan box}\\ \fcolorbox{blue}{green} {A green box in a blue frame}

Moreover, the command \pagecolor lets you specify. . . guess what?

26 5.3 Format/Paragraph

Let’s remind what a paragraph is according to LATEX: a portion of text that either ends with \\, or is followed by a blank line. Environments are LATEX’s way of specifying properties like text alignment or font selection for a given portion of text. It’s like selecting text with the mouse, then choosing the property you wish from a menu or clicking on a button. Another way is to enclose the text between brackets. Environments have this general form:

\begin{environment} ...text goes here... \end{environment}

For example, if you want to center a paragraph you’ll use the center environment: \begin{center} this text is centered this text is centered \end{center} Standard environments are listed in Table7. In the following sections, I’ll show you what to use and when.

5.3.1 Paragraph/Horizontal Alignment

By default, the text is justiﬁed. To get left–aligned, right–aligned or centered text, use the flushleft, flushright and center environments. The commands \raggedright, \raggedleft, and \centering are equivalent to their correspondent environments, but they do not start a new paragraph.

5.3.2 Paragraph/Vertical Alignment

The way paragraphs are separated is often puzzling to word processor users. Empty lines and multiple spaces are treated like a single empty line or space. This means that you can’t get more space between paragraphs inserting more empty lines. The commands \smallskip, \medskip, and \bigskip provide some space between paragraphs. If you need more space, use the command \vskip{parameter} as in this example: These paragraphs will be separated by 1.3 cm: These paragraphs will be separated by 1.3 cm:\\ \vskip 1.3cm there is a 1.3 cm gap above me. there is a 1.3 cm gap above me.

Note that \vskip only works between paragraphs. What if you wanted to start a page after an additional margin of, say, 1.5 cm? You’ll have to use \null, which sets a ‘mark’ in the text:

\null \vskip 1.3 cm This text comes after 1.3 cm... This text comes after 1.3 cm...

27 Environment Purpose abstract abstract array Math arrays center Centered lines description Labelled lists displaymath Formulas on their own line document Encloses the whole document enumerate Numbered lists eqnarray Sequence of aligned equations equation Displayed equation figure Floating ﬁgures flushleft Flushed left lines flushright Flushed right lines itemize Bulleted lists letter Letters list Generic list environment math In-line math minipage Miniature page picture Picture with text, arrows, lines and circles quotation Indented environment with paragraph indentation quote Indented environment with no paragraph indentation tabbing Align text arbitrarily table Floating tables tabular Align text in columns thebibliography Bibliography or reference list theorem Theorems, lemmas, etc titlepage For hand crafted title pages verbatim Simulating typed input verse For poetry and other things

Table 7: Standard LATEX environments.

28 Finally, the command \vfill is used to add empty lines between two paragraphs so that the second paragraph goes exactly to the bottom of the page. For example,

This appears at the top of the page. . . This appears at the top of the page{\ldots} \vfill {\ldots}and this at the bottom. . . . and this at the bottom.

5.3.3 Paragraph/Margins

Normally, the margins are set for the whole document as seen in Section 2.5. Redeﬁning them for a section of text will not work: if you want to set a paragraph’s margins, you’ll have to create a new environment like in the following example:

\newenvironment{margins}[2] { \begin{list}{} { \setlength{\leftmargin}{#1} \setlength{\rightmargin}{#2} } \item } {\end{list}}

Then you will use the new environment:

As you can see, this paragraph As you can see, this paragraph has normal has normal margins. margins. \begin{margins}{0.5cm}{1cm} But please note that this But please note that this para- paragraph has custom margins. graph has custom margins. \end{margins}

5.3.4 Paragraph/Indentation

To set the amount of indentation of the ﬁrst line of a paragraph, we redeﬁne the value of the \parindent counter. In the following example, we set a 1-cm indentation:

\setlength{\parindent}{1cm}

The commands \indent and \noindent allow/disallow indentation on the following paragraph. Finally, the distance between paragraphs is set by the \parskip counter:

\setlength{\parskip}{3pt}

5.3.5 Paragraph/Border and Shade

To get framed (bordered) paragraphs or words, you have the choice of using the framed package or the \parbox command. The package calc is required in the latter case. This is the simplest method, using framed:

29 \setlength{\FrameRule}{2pt} \setlength{\FrameSep}{5pt} \begin{framed} this is a framed paragraph! this is a framed paragraph! \end{framed} \definecolor{shadecolor}{rgb} {0.9,0.8,1} \begin{shaded} this is a shaded paragraph, do you like it? this is a shaded paragraph, do you like it? \end{shaded} Equivalently, use the boxedminipage package and the equally named environment. For those who want to know more: the commands

\framebox{ \begin{minipage}[c]{\linewidth} text to be framed \end{minipage} } are functionally equivalent to the boxedminipage environment. \width sets the width of the minipage equal to that of the remaining text. Obviously, you can specify the width as you like. Finally, to frame something adapting the frame to the width of the text: this is a \framebox[\width]{framed} this is a framed word word

Modifying the parameter, you can adjust the frame width: this is another \framebox[2\width][r]{framed} this is another framed word word

Note that the second optional parameter speciﬁes the alignment (to the right in this example).

5.3.6 Paragraph/Colour

Now that you have a bordered paragraph, you’ll want to set its colour too. Do this:

\colorbox{yellow}{ \begin{minipage} {0.8\linewidth} I am a minipage, my colour is yel- I am a minipage, my colour is yellow! low! \end{minipage} }

Just as an example, we set the minipage colour for only the 80% of its width. More about colours in Section 5.2.5.

30 5.3.7 Format/Columns

The commands \twocolumn and \onecolumn start a new page and set the number of columns; they can also be used as parameters in \documentclass. If this is not enough for you, the package multicols provides an environment of the same name. I could have set this section in two columns with these commands:

\columnseprule=1pt \begin{multicols}{2}[\subsection{\entry{Format}{Columns}}] The commands \cmd{twocolumn} ... \end{multicols}

The space between columns is controlled by the parameter \columnsep, and the thickness of the rule between columns by \columnseprule. The text given as optional parameter in brackets is excluded from the environment.

6 The Table Menu

Quite a complex subject. . . A table is a float (as explained in Section 4.12) that must fit on one page. It usually contains a tabular environment, even though other possibilities exist. By default, a table adjusts its width to match the width of its contents. Let me stress that the table environment is a float, but tabular is not. Keep this in mind if you want to write informal tabular material, i.e. without label and caption. This is the general format of a table:

\begin{table}[htbp] % placement: here, top, bottom, separate page % \begin{small} % sets the table font \begin{center} % optional % 4-column table; alignment is left, centered, right, fixed width \begin{tabular}{|l|c|rp{4cm}|} \hline % horizontal line \textbf{Left} & \textbf{Centre} & \textbf{Right} & \textbf{4 cm}\\ \hline row 1, col 1 & row 1, col 2 & row 1, col 3 & row 1, col 4\\ \cline{1-2} % horizontal line spanning columns 1-2 row 2, col 1 & row 2, col 2 & row 2, col 3 & row 2, col 4\\ \cline{1-2} \multicolumn{2}{|c|}{spanning two columns} & row 3, col 3 & row 3, col 4\\ \cline{1-3} row 4, col 1 & row 4, col 2 & row 4, col 3 & ~ \hfill right\\ % force a space with "\ " row 5, col 1 & row 5, col 2 & row 5, col 3 & left \hfill ~\\ row 5, col 1 & row 5, col 2 & row 5, col 3 & ~ \hfill centre \hfill ~\\ \hline \end{tabular} \caption{A sample table.} % labels are used for cross references; % for example, "see Table~\ref{tab:sampletab}" \label{tab:sampletab} \end{center} % \end{small} \end{table}

31 Left Centre Right 4 cm row 1, col 1 row 1, col 2 row 1, col 3 row 1, col 4 row 2, col 1 row 2, col 2 row 2, col 3 row 2, col 4 spanning two columns row 3, col 3 row 3, col 4 row 4, col 1 row 4, col 2 row 4, col 3 right row 5, col 1 row 5, col 2 row 5, col 3 left row 5, col 1 row 5, col 2 row 5, col 3 centre

Table 8: A sample table.

Table8 shows the result. Sometimes, a table is too wide and won’t fit on the page. In that case, the rotating package provides the new environment sidewaystable. Also, rotating makes it possible to rotate the contents of a cell by a specified angle. Finally, the tabularx package lets one specify tables of fixed width: the X column specifier indicates that a column can be spread as needed. Here’s an example:

\begin{sidewaystable} \begin{tabularx}{7.5cm}{|l|X|X|}

\hline wider wider \textbf{normal} & \textbf{tilted} & \textbf{wider}\\ \hline normal & \rotatebox{30}{I’m tilted!} &

I’m wider\\ ’ tilted! I’m

\hline tilted \end{tabularx} \end{sidewaystable} normal normal

The standard tabular environment cannot span more than one page! There are some b packages that overcome this limitation: you will want to try out longtable, supertabular, and xtab. To enable colours in tables, you use the colortbl package:

Colour by row:\\\vskip 2mm \begin{tabular}{|l|c|r|} \hline Colour by row: \rowcolor{cyan} one & two & three\\ \rowcolor{green} one two three one & two & three\\ one two three \rowcolor{yellow} one two three one & two & three\\ \hline \end{tabular}

32 Colour by column:\\\vskip 2mm \begin{tabular} {|>{\columncolor{cyan}}l| >{\color{red} Colour by column: \columncolor{green}}c| >{\columncolor{yellow}}r|} one two three \hline one & two & three\\ one two three one & two & three\\ one two three one & two & three\\ \hline \end{tabular}

To conclude the subject, a neat little trick. If you think that writing LATEX tables is too complicated, you could be relieved by OpenOﬃce Calc and Calc2LaTeX. The former is the well-known free spreadsheet, while the latter is a plugin that that lets you turn a cell range into a LATEX table. Links: http://www.openoﬃce.org/, http://calc2latex.sourceforge.net/.

6.1 Table/Line Spacing

A line adjusts itself to the height of the text it contains. To add some space before a line, the trick is to start it with a \rule of 0 length and speciﬁed height. To add space after a line, use \\ followed by optional space. Here is an example:

\begin{tabular}{lll} one two three one & two & three\\ 0.3 centimeters after this line 0.3 centimeters & \textbf{after} & this line\\[0.3cm] one two three one & two & three\\ one two three one & two & three\\ \rule{0pt}{1.2cm}1.2 centimeters & \textbf{before} & this line\\ \end{tabular} 1.2 centimeters before this line

6.2 Table/Rule Width

\begin{tabular}{|lll|} \hline %\setlength{\arrayrulewidth}{5pt} one & two & three\\ one two three \hline four ﬁve six four & five & six\\ %\setlength{\arrayrulewidth}{1pt} \hline \end{tabular}

6.3 Table/Aligning Numbers

A special case of a tabular environment is when we want to align numbers with respect to the decimal positions. The simplest method is using the @ column speciﬁer, which in practice is useful in tables

33 containing only numbers. The column separator & is replaced by the decimal dot:

\begin{tabular}{r@{.}l} 3&14159\\ 3.14159 1&61803\\ 1.61803 1&41421\\ 1.41421 100&00000 100.00000 \end{tabular}

Alternatively, use the dcolumn package, which adds the D column speciﬁer. D has three arguments: the separator to use in the LATEX source and in output (usually the same, ‘.’), and the number of digits to the right of the decimal place indicator. Optionally, the third argument can specify the number of digits to the left and to the right of the decimal place indicator, separated by a dot. Lastly, if the third argument is -1, the material of the column is centered around the separator. All material in the table is typeset in math mode. To insert headings, you’ll have to put the text in an \mbox. \begin{tabular}{|D{.}{,}{4.2}|% D{.}{.}{5}|D{.}{.}{-1}|} \hline \mbox{One} & \mbox{Two} & One Two Three \mbox{Three}\\ 10,33 10.33 10.33 10.33 & 10.33 & 10.33\\ 1000 1000 1000 1000 & 1000 & 1000\\ 5,1 5.1 5.1 5.1 & 5.1 & 5.1\\ 3,14 3.14159 3.14159 3.14 & 3.14159 & 3.14159\\ \hline \end{tabular}

6.4 Using slashbox

This package add the \backslashbox command: \begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|} \hline \backslashbox[2cm]{Lesson}{Date} & PP PP Date Monday & Tuesday\\ PP Monday Tuesday Lesson PPP \hline Stratigraphy room A room A Stratigraphy & room A & room A\\ Chemistry & room B & Lab $\alpha$\\ Chemistry room B Lab α Physics & room C & Lab $\beta$\\ Physics room C Lab β \hline \end{tabular}

6.5 Importing Data in LATEX Tables For many people, data files are the bread and butter of everyday’s work. Most data files are simply ASCII text with columns of numbers, but some people use spreadsheets. Nearly all spreadsheet applications can export sheets in the ASCII-based .csv file format; values are usually separated by the ‘;’ character. Converting a data file into a LATEX table is quite a tedious process. The following script for Unix will convert a datafile with an arbitrary number of columns to a table. It will also work on .csv files.

34 #!/bin/sh

# dat2tex.sh: converts tabular data to a tabular environment if [ $# != 1 ]; then echo "Usage: $0 " exit 1 fi

# is this a csv file? grep ";" $1 > /dev/null if [ $? = 0 ]; then AWK="awk -F;" else AWK=awk fi

# ok awk, make my day $AWK ’{if (1 == FNR) { \ printf "\\begin{tabular}{"; \ for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {printf "l"}; \ printf "}\n" } for (i = 1; i < NF; i++) \ {printf $i" & "} printf $NF"\\\\ \n"} \ END {printf "\\end{tabular}\n"}’ $1

# end of dat2tex

7 The Tools Menu

7.1 Tools/Mail Merges

This useful and time-saving tool is implemented in LATEX by the textmerg package. Let’s consider a simple document, in which the name, surname, and title of people we’re writing to may vary. The remaining text does not change. We’ll define three fields, which are the variable part of the text: \Name, \Surname, and \Title. Their values will be gathered from an external file, data.dat.

\documentclass{article} \usepackage{textmerg} \begin{document} % let’s declare the variable fields: % \Void is for empty lines \Fields{\Name\Surname\Title-\Void} \Merge{data.dat}{% Dear \Title{} \Surname,\\ may I call you \Name?\\ Yours,\\ \hspace{3cm}Guido\clearpage} \end{document}

The fourth ﬁeld, \Void, isn’t really necessary and it’s there for illustration. It’s preceded

35 by a minus sign, which indicates that it can be empty in the data ﬁle. Simply put, we want to separate the records using empty lines. The ﬁle data.dat reads:

Guido Gonzato Dr.

Francesco Mulargia Prof.

Marie Curie Mme

That’s it: the resulting output will contain the merged text, one page for each recipient.

7.2 Tools/Labels

If making mail merges was easy, making labels is even trivial. Let’s suppose you want to make 20 equal labels on a 3×8 peel–oﬀ label sheet. The package to use, predictably, is called labels. In this example, we’ll make 10 plain labels and 10 boxed labels:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} \usepackage{labels} \LabelCols=3 % n. of columns of labels \LabelRows=8 % n. of rows of labels \LeftBorder=8mm % borders of each label \RightBorder=8mm \TopBorder=5mm \BottomBorder=5mm \LabelGridtrue % show the grid \numberoflabels=10 % number of labels of each type to print % the text of the label is specified by % the \addresslabel[]{} macro: \begin{document} \addresslabel[\large] % optional arguments {\textbf{Guido Gonzato}, Ph.D.\\ \textsl{Linux system manager}} % now on to the boxed labels \boxedaddresslabel[\fboxsep=4mm\fboxrule=1mm] {\textbf{Guido Gonzato}, Ph.D.\\ \textsl{Linux system manager}} \end{document}

To make labels containing different addresses, you may use either an external file or insert the addresses in the main file:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} \usepackage{labels} \LabelCols=3

36 \LabelRows=8 \LeftBorder=3mm \RightBorder=3mm \TopBorder=8mm \BottomBorder=8mm \LabelGridtrue \begin{document} % use either this environment: \begin{labels} 1$^{st}$ name 1$^{st}$ address 1$^{st}$ city, state, zipcode

2$^{nd}$ name 2$^{nd}$ address 2$^{nd}$ city, state, zipcode

3$^{rd}$ name 3$^{rd}$ address 3$^{rd}$ city, state, zipcode \end{labels} % or an external file containing exactly the same text: % \labelfile{addresses.dat} \end{document}

It is left to you to combine textmerg and labels!

7.3 Tools/Default Language

LATEX default language is English, but other languages are supported. By language support I mean the translation of terms like ‘Chapter’ or ‘Index’, correct hyphenation, and the possibility of inserting characters like ‘¸c’or ‘é’directly via your keyboard. (The normal way being typing \c c and \’e.) Your LATEX distribution contains a file called language.dat (usually $TEXMF/tex/generic/ config/language.dat that contains a list of languages. Editing this file you choose the languages for which you want hyphenation patterns. If you are not a native English speaker, you’ll want to use the package babel as in the following example:

\usepackage[italian,english]{babel}

babel alters the way some characters behave in a language-dependent way. If you Z experience odd problems, insert the oﬀending characters using the \charXX syntax.

In addition, to type accented letters and in general non-standard ASCII characters3 you may want to use the packages inputenc and fontenc. In most cases, UTF-8 is the right choice: remember to enable it in your editor too!

3in computer jargon, ‘standard ASCII characters’ are the characters whose code is included between 32 (space) and 126 (tilde).

37 \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

A different way of inserting accented letters is configuring your editor to type those for you. For example, I set up my editor of choice (jed) to have it insert \’e whenever I type ‘é’.I included this in my .jedrc: define latex_mode_hook () { set_abbrev_mode (1); if ( () = abbrev_table_p ("LaTeX") ) use_abbrev_table ("LaTeX"); #ifdef WIN32 % prevent clash with movement keys undefinekey ("àà","LaTeX-Mode"); definekey (" \\‘a", "àà","LaTeX-Mode"); #else local_setkey (" \\‘a", "à"); #endif local_setkey (" \\’e", "é"); local_setkey (" \\‘e", "è"); local_setkey (" \\‘\\i{}", "`ı"); local_setkey (" \\‘o", "ò"); local_setkey (" \\‘u", "ù"); }

Please consult your editor’s documentation.

7.4 Tools/Hyphenation

Although LATEX usually does a good job at hyphenating words, sometimes manual inter- vention may yield better results. Manual hyphens are speciﬁed inserting \- where we want the word to be broken. A better way is to declare hyphenation rules:

\hyphenation{ge-o-phy-sics ge-o-lo-gy earth}

The above declaration instructs LATEX not to hyphen the word ‘earth’. Another way to prevent a word to be hyphenated is to put it in \mbox:

Do not hyphen \mbox{internationalisation}, please. I’m a masochistic.

7.5 Tools/Spell Check

LATEX is not aware of spell spelling. This task is done using external tools like ispell, aspell or others. Under Unix, you can use ispell this way: shell> ispell -t mydocument.tex

The -t switch instructs ispell to ignore TEX and LATEX commands. If your language is not English, specify the appropriate dictionary with the -d switch: shell> ispell -d italiano -t mydocument.tex

38 8 The Help Menu

There are many ways of getting help with LATEX, both online and oﬄine. The best place to start is the CTAN site, http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/.

• info latex (Unix systems) gives a concise but very complete on-line summary of commands and concepts;

• http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/LatexHelpBook/ is a very nice help system for LATEX, fully integrated with Windows. • don’t forget the http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex/topics newsgroup: it’s an invaluable source of help.

As of 2015, most GNU/Linux distributions ship with TeXLive, probably the most complete TEX/LATEX systems. A lot of documentation is provided; on my Ubuntu machine, it’s found in /usr/share/doc/texlive-doc/.

9 The End

This document is copyleft c Guido Gonzato, 2001–2015, and released under the GNU Free Documentation Licence. I really hope you’ll ﬁnd this guide useful. For any suggestions or comments, please feel free to contact me.

39 A Document Templates

A template for the class article was presented in Section 2.1. More examples are shown in the following ﬁgures.

\documentclass[twoside,11pt]{book} \begin{document} \frontmatter \begin{titlepage} \title{The Book of Mine} \end{titlepage} \author{John B. Smith} \maketitle \tableofcontents \mainmatter \part{The Beginning} \chapter{Introduction} \section{Let’s Start} The book starts here. \part{The End} \backmatter Thank you for reading this book. \end{document}

Figure 5: Book template.

40 \documentclass[twoside,12pt]{report} % tables and figures at the end: \usepackage{endfloat} \begin{document} \title{Final Report} \author{John B. Smith} \date{London, \today} \maketitle \begin{abstract} This is the final report. \end{abstract} \tableofcontents \listoftables \listoffigures \part{Start} \chapter{Begin} \section{Introduction} The report starts here. \end{document}

Figure 6: Report template.

\documentclass[12pt]{letter} \begin{document} \address{My address} \signature{Guido} \begin{letter}{John’s address} \opening{Dear John,} Thank you for being my friend. \closing{Hope to see you soon,} \ps{P.S. Say hello to granny!} \encl{My son’s photographs!} \end{letter} \end{document}

Figure 7: Letter template.

41 \documentclass[a4paper]{article} \usepackage{type1cm} \usepackage{times} \usepackage{color} \usepackage{rotating} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \begin{sidewaysfigure} \fontsize{2.5cm}{2.5cm}\selectfont \centerline{\textcolor{blue}{\textbf{Please:}}} \vskip 1cm \fontsize{4cm}{3cm}\selectfont \centerline{\textcolor{red}{DO NOT}} \centerline{\textcolor{red}{SMOKE}} \centerline{\textcolor{red}{HERE!}} \vskip 1cm \fontsize{2cm}{2cm}\selectfont \centerline{\textcolor{magenta}{If you do,}} \centerline{\textcolor{magenta}{you’ll be \emph{deboned!}}} \end{sidewaysfigure} \end{document}

Figure 8: How to write a notice.

42 \documentclass{article} \usepackage[absolute,showboxes]{textpos} \usepackage{color} \usepackage{framed} \usepackage{graphicx} \setlength{\TPHorizModule}{10mm} % standard unit of length \setlength{\TPVertModule}{\TPHorizModule} \setlength{\TPboxrulesize}{1pt} % box line width % start everything near the top-left corner \textblockorigin{0mm}{0mm}

\begin{document} \setlength{\parindent}{0pt} \definecolor{shadecolor}{rgb}{0.9,1,1} \begin{textblock}{5}(0,0) % this block is 5 modules wide; height is % automatically determined \begin{center} \begin{minipage}[c]{0.8 \linewidth} \begin{shaded} This block is placed with its top left corner at the ‘origin’ on the page, which has been set to (0mm,0mm). The internal margin and the shading are provided by the \texttt{minipage} and \texttt{shaded} environments. \end{shaded} \end{minipage} \end{center} \end{textblock} \begin{textblock}{6}(10,1) \includegraphics[width=6cm,angle=-90]{gnuplot.ps} This picture is at (10,1). Note that rotating it by -90 makes it overflow the margin. \end{textblock} \begin{textblock}{5}[0.5,0.5](2.5,8) This block is at position (2.5,8), but because the optional argument [0.5,0.5] has been given, it is the centre of the block which is located at that point, rather than the top-left corner. \end{textblock} \begin{textblock}{3,4}(6,4) The dimensions of this block are 3$\times$4 cm. Its origin is position (6,4) on the page. Note that the text overflows the margin in some cases; you’ll want to use the \texttt{minipage} environment to prevent that. \end{textblock} \end{document}

Figure 9: How to write a poster.